CROPS AND PROFITS 



with bark knotted like that of forest trees, and 

 bearing only cracked, meagre, woody fruit. 

 For New England it is a lost variety. Hap- 

 pily, however, its boughs take grafts with great 

 kindliness; and I have now the pleasure of 

 seeing fair full heads upon every one of these 

 out-lived stocks, of the Bartlett, Flemish 

 Beauty, Bonne de Jersey, and Lawrence. 



There were not a few Buffum trees in the 

 ranks, which were in a state of most extra- 

 ordinary dilapidation ; their trunks white with 

 moss, their upright shoots completely covered 

 with a succession of crooked, gnarled, mossy 

 fruit spurs, that crinkled under the scraper 

 like dried brambles; the extremity of every 

 upright bough was reduced to a shrivelled 

 point of blackened and sun-dried wood, and 

 the fruit so dwarfed as to puzzle the most as- 

 tute of the pomologists. 



I made a clean sweep of the old fruit spurs, 

 — docked the limbs, — scraped the bark to the 

 quick, — washed with an unctuous soapy mix- 

 ture, — dug about and enriched the roots, and 

 in three years' time, there were new leading 

 shoots, all garnished with fresh fruit spurs — 

 which in September fairly broke away with 

 the weight of the glowing pears. 



The Seckels, of which there were several 



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